Komatsu building new warehouse at site of razed factory buildings

Monday

Dec 15, 2014 at 2:49 PMDec 15, 2014 at 3:26 PM

PEORIA — Peoria’s other heavy-equipment multinational is busy making changes on its 130-acre site in the part of town known as Averyville.

Earlier this year, Komatsu America Corp. tore down three old factory buildings that loomed over Adams Street for almost a century. In place of the factory buildings, the company has made sweeping physical changes in the area with new landscaping and a new sidewalk under construction while establishing a new facility on the site — this time well off the road.

“The newest building — now under construction — is a 200,000-square-foot warehouse to house and manage spare parts,” said Jim Mathis, the company’s general manager of manufacturing.

When the facility is completed in April, the new facility will mean 90 more jobs in addition to the 720 employees already on the Komatsu payroll, he said.

Components for the big mining trucks manufactured at Komatsu’s Peoria site will be tested here first, said Mathis. Once assembled, trucks are tested at the Japanese-owned company’s proving grounds in Tucson, Ariz., he said.

The Peoria plant is one of only two factories maintained by Komatsu outside Japan. The company has its U.S. headquarters in Rolling Meadows, just outside of Chicago, said Mathis, a Komatsu employee for 30 years.

Although Komatsu first set up shop in Averyville in 1988 through a joint venture with the Dresser Co., the area has accommodated heavy machinery construction since 1890. That’s when Robert Avery opened his plow-manufacturing company here. Robert LeTourneau followed in the 1930s with his own brand of earth-moving equipment.

In 1953, LeTourneau sold to the Westinghouse Air Brake Co. The manufacturing continued, but the names changed: American Standard, Dresser, Dresser-Komatsu and, in 1996, Komatsu took over.

Work on refashioning the Komatsu site has gone smoothly since it started in April, said Bob Hoerr, president of Peoria-based P.J. Hoerr, the construction company that took down Komatsu’s old buildings and is erecting the new facility.

“We’re also working on reconfiguring some of the dirt on the site,” he said.

Area neighborhood groups praise Komatsu for what the company has done this year.

“It’s so nice to get rid of those old buildings. People will now be able to walk on a sidewalk on that side of Adams Street,” said Rosilee Walker, president of the Averyville Improvement Association.

“It’ll be nice to have a little green space,” she said.

Steve Tarter is Journal Star business editor. Tarter’s phone number is 686-3260, and his email address is starter@pjstar.com. Follow his blog, Minding Business, on pjstar.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveTarter

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